The storm continued exactly as Sahger had promised: relentless and endless.
Two hours of rest inside the cave had done nothing to lessen the fury of that manufactured sky.
When we returned to open ground, the rain was still hammering the dark rock with the same violence, pouring down the cliff walls in muddy cascades and turning every descent into a trap of slick stone.
Above us, artificial lightning split the dark blanket of clouds at calculated intervals, illuminating the distant, dreadful silhouettes of Gron-Tarh's mega-towers.
Sahger led from the front, his spear strapped across his back and the red visor of his helmet cutting through the gloom as he searched for geographic landmarks across terrain he hadn't set foot on in seven years.
A short distance behind him, Tsukumo kept Havelyn's gravity reduced.
She was already walking with firmer steps, but her right wing remained rigidly pinned against her torso, and the weight of her soaked clothes and feathers only made the march harder.
I brought up the rear.
Or tried to.
The anxiety building in my legs made moving at that slow pace feel like torture.
Candice.
Laura.
Each name hammered against my chest with every step.
Sahger had made it clear that he couldn't guarantee anything. Seven years were more than enough time for a resistance to be wiped off the map, for a village to be reduced to rubble, or for someone to die without leaving so much as a name carved into stone.
I understood the risk rationally, but my body refused to accept the possibility of failure.
There had to be something there.
There had to be a trail.
After nearly an hour of cutting through the rocky elevations, I noticed something bizarre changing around us.
The rain didn't gradually weaken.
It simply stopped.
Ten steps behind me, freezing water had been lashing my face.
Five steps ahead, only scattered droplets remained, carried on a dry breeze.
When we crossed one final ridge of stone, we abruptly stepped beyond the storm's reach.
I stopped and looked back in shock.
Across the horizon behind us, the storm remained black and violent, a colossal wall of dark clouds heavy with lightning.
But the line where it ended was straight.
Almost surgical.
A flawless boundary divided the planet's sky.
On one side stood Gron-Tarh's perpetual artificial night.
On the other, pale natural light, thin clouds, and a sickly sun cutting through the atmosphere.
The contrast was so crude that it looked like two separate worlds had been poorly stitched together.
"That's disturbing," Havelyn murmured, lifting her face toward the pale light.
Tsukumo stopped beside her and adjusted the collar of his coat.
"The sky is perfectly divided."
"Because this isn't weather," Sahger explained without breaking stride.
"It's a territorial boundary."
"The prison's atmospheric matrix doesn't cover the entire planet. It was designed to shield only the central complex, the industrial settlements, and the primary containment perimeter."
Being outside the storm didn't mean we were safe.
The terrain quickly shifted from dark rock to dry, dusty plains populated by low, twisted vegetation.
Along the way, the skeletons of ancient structures dotted the landscape: collapsed building foundations, fallen transmission towers, and remnants of paved roads the dry earth had already begun to swallow.
They were undeniable traces that many people had once tried to settle that forgotten sector.
I clenched my teeth, bitterness filling my mouth.
Sahger turned his helmet toward me, noticing the rigid set of my shoulders.
"If you lose your head now because you're anxious, you'll screw this up and get us killed before we even cross the perimeter."
"I'm calm," I lied, clenching my fists.
"No, you're not."
Before I could argue, Havelyn pointed toward the northern horizon, her voice cutting through our exchange.
"Smoke."
I looked where she indicated.
At first, I saw only the gray formations of rock.
Then I caught it.
A thin, sooty strand rising from behind a low ridge.
Smoke meant fire.
Fire meant human occupation.
"We found it," I murmured.
"Suki, wait!" Sahger warned, reaching out to grab me.
He was too slow.
Wind exploded beneath the soles of my boots before anyone could react.
I ignored Tsukumo shouting behind me and Sahger's vicious curse echoing across the plain.
I tore across the desert like an arrow, constant acceleration bending the scrub vegetation and throwing up a thick wake of dust and gravel behind me.
My mind could focus on only one thing.
That gray plume.
As I approached the ridge, the smoke thickened and the settlement took shape: an improvised watchtower, corrugated metal roofs, steel barricades, repurposed military containers, and dozens of reinforced tents.
The village didn't merely exist.
It looked operational.
My chest swelled with blind relief.
They're here.
That relief lasted exactly two seconds.
Then the air around me froze.
The temperature shift was so brutal and instantaneous that my own breath turned into thick mist before I could take another step.
I slammed to a stop, digging my heels into the dry earth.
With a deafening crash, the ground beneath my feet erupted.
A gigantic wall of translucent blue ice burst from the earth in every direction.
These weren't scattered spikes.
It was a continuous, colossal structure thirty meters high, rising around me in a perfect circle and isolating me from the rest of the plain inside a frozen cell.
The ice was so dense that the pale sunlight passed through it only as a murky glow.
"What the fuck...?" I growled, staring up at the top of the blue abyss.
The deep hum of heavy engines began to reverberate from beyond the ice.
One.
Two.
Five vehicles.
Small patrol craft rose above the crest of the frozen wall.
They didn't bear the polished colors of Gron-Tarh's prison fleet.
These were patched tactical vehicles, covered in hastily welded armor plates, mismatched colors, and visibly modified engines.
But they were armed to the teeth.
A dozen automatic cannons angled toward me, and laser sights painted my chest, neck, and face red.
"Stay where you are!" an amplified metallic voice boomed from the first ship.
"Hands where we can see them! Disable all elemental manipulation immediately!" a second pilot ordered as the vehicle maneuvered lower.
My jaw clenched hard enough for my teeth to click.
Hunters.
Had to be another fucking group of mercenaries or patrols ready to stand in my way.
More guns pointed at me.
More stupid orders.
More wasted time while Laura remained lost somewhere on this filthy world.
"You have entered a protected perimeter!" the speaker continued.
"Get on your knees and identify yourself within ten seconds!"
I remained standing, arms at my sides, feeling the aura of wind around me begin to heat purely in response to my stress.
"Beginning countdown! Nine... eight..."
"You're messing with the wrong person today," I muttered, venom dripping from my voice.
"Seven... six..."
"Let me handle the countdown," a woman's voice cut in from the roof of the central ship.
Her tone was dry, rough, and completely devoid of military protocol.
I looked up.
A woman stood atop the hull of the lead craft.
Her hair was dyed an intense electric blue and tied into a messy bun, with several loose strands falling across a face smeared with dust.
Her clothing was a functional patchwork of worn leather, repurposed tactical armor plates, and metal guards that clearly came from different sources.
What immediately drew the eye, however, was her left arm.
It was entirely mechanical, running from shoulder to fingertips, built from battle-scarred dark gray alloy plates with exposed pistons and hydraulic lines at the joints.
She stared down at me with pale eyes burning with deep irritation, as if my mere presence there were a personal insult to her rest.
"Five," she continued, tilting her head.
"So? You going to tell us who you are, or would you rather get turned into a sieve?"
"You're the one who put up this fucking ice?" I shot back, pointing at the wall.
"Four," she said, gesturing with her mechanical arm for the cannons to keep their sights locked on me.
Heat rushed into my head.
The anger I'd been suppressing since leaving Lavinsk finally burst through containment.
"Fire Transformation!"
Heat erupted from my chest with the violence of a land mine.
Incandescent crimson lines tore across my skin, spreading over my arms, neck, and face.
My body temperature shot to such absurd levels that the dry earth beneath my boots vitrified in the blink of an eye.
The sudden thermal shock made the ice surrounding me release a deafening crack.
Massive fractures ripped through the thirty-meter wall, and tons of ice melted instantly, collapsing not as water but evaporating before they could even touch the ground.
A colossal cloud of boiling steam exploded across the plain, swallowing the ships, the cannons, and all visibility within seconds.
Overheating alarms began shrieking through the vehicles.
"Perimeter temperature up four hundred percent!"
"We've lost visual! Fall back! Fall back!"
I advanced through the scalding mist.
One of the tactical ships emerged in front of me, trying to maneuver blind.
The pilot spotted me through the reinforced glass and his eyes widened.
I raised my right hand, the air in front of my palm warping as the metal along the ship's nose began to soften under the radiant heat.
Before I could fire the blast, a blue blur sliced through the steam.
A thick barrier of ice erupted between my hand and the ship's hull, absorbing the heat of my attack.
The protection turned to water a second later, but it bought the vehicle enough time to accelerate away.
The blur dropped from the sky.
The woman's mechanical arm struck the earth first, cracking the dry crust with a sharp snap.
She landed on one knee, perfectly positioned between me and the retreating soldiers.
With her organic hand pressed flat against the ground, another wave of low ice spread outward in a fan, not to trap me, but to raise a defensive barricade for her troops.
"Fall back to the second containment line!" she shouted at the pilots without taking her eyes off me.
"Now!"
The woman charged.
Her mechanical arm came at me in a silver blur, slicing through the air with speed that completely betrayed the weight of the metal.
I jerked my head back at the last possible instant, feeling the displaced air from her fist brush past my nose.
She used the momentum of the missed strike, pivoted on one foot, and drove her heel straight toward my chest.
I crossed my forearms to block.
The impact felt like being hit by a tree trunk.
I was shoved five meters backward, my boots carving deep trenches through the dry ground before I managed to stop.
She gave me no room to breathe.
"You think you can come marching out of that damned prison's direction and start incinerating my people?!" she shouted, striding toward me.
"I don't fucking work for the prison!" I shouted back, spitting dust from my mouth.
"Excellent argument!" she mocked, driving her mechanical hand into the ground.
A row of sharpened ice stalagmites erupted from the earth toward me.
I leaped upward, watching the spikes tear through the space where I'd been standing.
In midair, I twisted and released a concentrated burst of flame.
The woman raised her mechanical arm in front of her face.
Ice condensed around the metal like a crude shield, absorbing the impact of the flames and triggering another explosion of steam.
I lost track of her in the mist for a second.
I pushed the Transformation to its limit.
The red markings across my skin brightened until they glowed almost white-hot.
The woman sensed the massive shift in energy, and her expression changed.
Contempt gave way to cold tactical calculation.
She glanced at the damaged ships behind her, the village barricades, and the men struggling to regroup.
She was measuring what this fight could cost everyone around her.
"GET OUT OF THE IMPACT ZONE!" she roared at her troops.
She charged me alone.
Her mechanical arm struck against her own forearm with a locked metallic clank.
Small compartments opened along the limb, and luminous channels flared an icy blue.
The ice beneath her feet began spreading at terrifying speed.
"I'm not letting some pyromaniac brat touch my men!"
"Then get out of my way!"
"You'll have to go through me!"
The woman raised both arms.
A monumental mass of ice rose behind her, not a defensive wall, but a fluid, razor-edged avalanche dozens of meters high that surged across the plain like a solid tsunami.
Instead of concentrating the flames into a single point, I released everything at once, unleashing a brutal wave of fire straight ahead.
The collision between the two forces was horrific.
Fire and ice annihilated each other in a continuous detonation that buried the battlefield beneath boiling mist and the roar of water hitting red-hot iron.
The pressure of the steam was so intense that we could barely see a hand's width in front of us.
I pushed forward through the white haze until I collided directly with her, the clash between us tearing through the steam.
Her mechanical arm shot toward my throat.
I caught the metal wrist in midair.
Ice immediately coated my hand and raced up my forearm.
I drove my body temperature to its maximum, shattering the frozen crust into a thousand pieces.
She tried to drive a knee into my ribs.
I slipped aside and threw an elbow toward her temple.
The blue-haired woman escaped by inches.
In the same motion, her right hand closed, and a short blade of crystalline ice grew over her palm.
She turned her hips and slashed across my chest.
I leaned backward.
The edge tore through the leather of my coat, opening the fabric without reaching my skin.
Before I could recover my stance, the ice in her hand kept growing.
The blade lengthened.
Curved.
In an instant, what had looked like a knife became a translucent ice scythe.
She tried to pull the weapon back to create distance.
I didn't let her.
I stepped inside her guard, trapped her right arm beneath my shoulder, and crushed it against my body, eliminating the space she needed to wield the scythe.
The blue-haired woman reacted immediately.
Her mechanical hand clamped around my left arm with a metallic snap and locked it against her own body.
For a second, neither of us could retreat.
We were trapped against each other, strength against strength, the ice blade wedged between our bodies.
We remained locked in that contest of raw physical and elemental power, face-to-face amid the boiling steam.
Fire and ice crackled between us, scorching and freezing the air at the same time.
Her pale eyes burned with pure murderous rage.
Mine were probably exactly the same.
"You came from Gron-Tarh's patrol line!" she snarled, the mechanical joint grinding against my pressure.
"I came looking for someone!"
"Everyone on this damned planet came looking for someone!" she shot back, trying to sweep my leg.
"I'm not your fucking enemy!"
"Then stop trying to incinerate my soldiers, asshole!"
The word caught in my throat.
Soldiers.
For a moment, the mist thinned, and I looked past her shoulder.
The men scattered across the perimeter weren't wearing Gron-Tarh military armor.
They wore no insignias.
They didn't carry themselves with the cold discipline of mercenaries.
They were too busy risking their lives to tow a damaged vehicle and help an injured comrade off the ground.
They were armed civilians.
Survivors.
My guard faltered.
The fire in my veins dimmed slightly.
She noticed immediately, but didn't relax a single muscle in her mechanical arm.
"Turn that fucking fire off," she ordered through clenched teeth.
"Tell your men to lower the cannons first."
"You're surrounded, kid."
"I noticed."
"Then do yourself a favor and be smart."
"That's difficult today," I growled.
Her organic hand began condensing another blade of ice.
My skin flared red again.
We were about to restart the massacre when a heavy, massive, familiar hand settled firmly on my injured shoulder.
The weight of that presence locked my entire body in place.
I almost spun and attacked on pure instinct, but then I recognized the deep voice directly above me.
"Enough."
Sahger.
The flow of fire through my body wavered.
The blue-haired woman took advantage of the opening and leaped three meters back in one agile motion, raising an ice scythe in her right hand while her mechanical hand covered her chest defensively.
She was about to shout something, but her eyes finally locked onto the figure behind me.
The ice in her hand stopped growing.
No one moved.
The steam continued to disperse slowly in the wind sweeping across the plain.
Sahger stood beside me, helmet sealed, dark blue armor coated in dust and soot, hunter's spear crossed over his back.
Tsukumo and Havelyn stood just behind him.
Tsukumo swept his golden eyes across the destruction around us—the soaked ground, steam, melted ice, damaged ships—then looked at me.
He didn't say a word.
The raised eyebrow said everything he thought about my self-control.
Sahger tightened his grip on my shoulder.
"Turn it off, Suki."
I took a deep breath, trying to slow the heart that felt ready to tear through my chest.
"Okay."
"You just tried to roast the only person we came to this planet looking for."
I went still.
My eyes moved from Sahger's hand to the blue-haired woman.
Her mechanical arm remained raised, but the fury had drained from her face, replaced by absolute shock.
"That," Sahger said, gesturing faintly toward her with his head, "is Candice."
A heavy silence fell over the plain.
The Fire Transformation finally faded from my skin.
The incandescent lines vanished little by little, leaving only exhaustion and soot behind.
Candice continued staring at me for another second before her eyes shifted toward the armor beside me.
Her rigid, aggressive posture faltered.
"That can't be..." she murmured.
Sahger didn't answer.
She took a hesitant step forward, her gaze traveling over the details of his armor, the scarred metal at the shoulder, the design of the spear, and the red visor dimming out of combat mode.
It was as if she were trying to assemble a puzzle from pieces of a memory far too old to trust.
"Red Crest?" Her voice came without amplification, barely above a whisper.
The hunter removed his helmet with a hiss of depressurization, revealing the hard face marked by years.
"Hello, Candice."
Her features twisted into a mixture of relief and renewed anger.
"Seven years..."
"I know."
"Seven fucking years without a single sign you were alive!" she shouted, taking another two steps toward him and pointing her mechanical arm directly at his chest.
"You vanished!"
"I figured Yashin had ripped your head off and hung it from the prison gates!"
"He tried," Sahger replied with a bitter half-smile.
"And who's the pyromaniac with serious anger-management issues?"
I dragged a hand across my face, wiping away sweat.
"Suki."
"I didn't ask your name, kid."
"Then why the hell did you—"
Sahger's hand came down heavily on my shoulder again, shutting me up before I started another pointless argument.
Candice swept her gaze over the scorched earth and pools of steaming water.
"He melted one of my thick ice walls. You're not exactly keeping good company."
"You tried to lock me inside an ice cell the size of a mountain! I thought you were more of those damned hunters!" I argued, unable to hold back.
"Because you came charging from Gron-Tarh's containment line fast enough to trigger every security alarm we have," she shot back without lowering her voice.
Havelyn approached next, walking slowly.
The moment Candice's pale eyes landed on the black wings and the bandages wrapped around her back, the rebel leader's sarcasm vanished completely.
"Why did you come back, Sahger?"
The mercenary met the blue-haired woman's stare without blinking.
"We need to get inside that prison, and I don't know anyone better than you for that."
Candice went completely still.
The wind sweeping across the plain stirred the blue strands of her hair.
She looked at me one last time, then at the vitrified ground beneath my boots, at Tsukumo, at the wounded Havelyn, and finally at her old companion-in-arms.
"Your vocabulary is still terrible, and your choice of allies has gotten worse," she said, releasing a heavy sigh that revealed just how much exhaustion she carried.
She turned on her heel and raised her mechanical arm toward the soldiers in the ships.
"Lower your weapons! Everyone, cancel Code Red!"
The men in the hatches exchanged looks, hesitating for a second before obeying.
The cannons retracted with a sequence of hydraulic sounds, and the laser sights vanished from my chest.
"You're coming with me," Candice ordered, jerking her thumb toward the village entrance.
"And this story better be damn good."
Sahger nodded, and we started after her.
When I passed beside her, Candice's mechanical arm snapped sideways with frightening precision, blocking my path at chest height.
I stopped immediately, staring at the cold metal only inches from my chest.
Her pale eyes bored into me.
"One warning, kid."
"What?"
"If you light so much as a single match or burn anything else in my village without my permission..." She leaned closer, her voice dropping into a dangerous whisper. "I'm going to find out whether that pretty transformation of yours still works when you don't have any teeth left in your mouth. Am I clear?"
For several seconds, I stared at her grease-stained face, then glanced down at the metal arm stretched across my path.
"Fine."
Candice withdrew the mechanical arm and resumed marching ahead.
I followed the group in silence.
Around us, the resistance fighters began gathering their equipment and guiding the damaged ships toward the village maintenance yards.
The camp was real.
The resistance was still breathing.
And Candice was alive.
For the first time in months of blindly chasing traces and shadows, we stood before someone who understood exactly how massive the monster we faced truly was.
And who might know where to make it bleed first.